Link on the Chain
by ThePenWielder
Summary: Alec's curiosity about William Herondale wins out in the end, but what Magnus has to say about him may have been more than Alec was bargaining for. Mortality has never seemed like more of a curse until now. AlecxMagnus.


**Hey guys! It's been a while since I've posted anything and it feels great to get back to writing again :) So this is my first ever Mortal Instruments story and any kind of feedback would be so much appreciated! Alec and Magnus are probably my favorite part of this whole series. I will hopefully be writing more about them because they are so freaking perfect. But be warned,_ this is a boyxboy story_. If it's a problem, just don't read. **  
><strong>Read and enjoy!<strong>

Alexander Lightwood loved Magnus' Brooklyn apartment, a place where he spent the majority of his time when not fulfilling his Nephilium duties. He didn't ever have to say it out loud, the warlock just knew, just as he knew many things about his boyfriend without him having to say it. Magnus knew that Alec would roll his eyes when he was wrong and did not want to admit it. He knew that public displays of affection made him uncomfortable but when they were alone in the apartment he loved being close to Magnus.

Alec never admitted that either, but the way he gladly accepted Magnus' head into his lap as they distractedly watched television told him all he needed to know. The younger boy's fingers raked pleasantly through his hair that was astonishingly free of gel, spikes, or glitter that day. It sent him to a hazy zone between sleep and consciousness.

"Magnus?" Alec spoke softly, prodding with his voice to see if Magnus had fallen asleep. He laid a gentle on his ribs, sending delicious tingles throughout his abdomen. The warlock pressed his face deeper into the cradle of Alec's legs, curling his fingers about his knee, surprised to find it not full of holes, as was usual.

"Mm?"

"Who was Will?" he asked, unprompted. "Just… tell me about him."

Magnus contemplated in whether or not to humor him. Alec was so curious and Magnus supposed he had a right to be, what with all he had heard secondhand. "A Shadowhunter. In London, more than a century ago." Saying that made Magnus feel unbelievably old; he continued with difficulty. "Looked somewhat similar to you, some might say; very different in demeanor, though. He was extremely dedicated to Shadowhunting, more so than almost any I've ever seen. His name was William Herondale."

"Herondale?" Alec repeated, thoroughly shocked. "How did you know him?"

"We exchanged favors once," Magnus said distantly, the image of Will forcefully flashing across his eyelids. Unexpectedly, the image did not cause a flutter inside his chest, for the first time in many, many years. The realization brought him much joy.

Alec stiffened under his head and Magnus stifled an aggravated groan. "And before you ask, no, they were not sexual favors."

_Which is mostly true_, Magnus thought in mild guilt but roughly pushed it away.

"I wasn't going to ask," Alec muttered, pulling his hand out of Magnus' dark locks, leaving a chill on his scalp.

"Maybe not, but you were thinking it." Magnus reluctantly raised his head from the boy's lap and leveled him with a steady, cat-like stare.

"Was he beautiful?" he murmured. Magnus' heart clenched uncomfortably.

"Yes." He didn't want to lie because lying was even more painful than the truth, but not by much. "That always has been my downfall, I suppose- pretty things," Magnus muttered bitterly.

He looked as if he'd been slapped across the face. "Is that all I am to you? A pretty plaything to amuse yourself with? At least until you get bored, or my _pretty face_," he said the words with disgust, "ages into that of a haggard old man."

"Alexander, you misunderstand-"

"No! _You_ don't understand. You've done this dozens of times, hell, probably hundreds, but this is the first time for me. I've never fallen in love before, Magnus, not like you. Loving someone, being loved back, it's all old news to you. You had love before me and you'll find it after me. There is no reason that I am any different, nothing more than just another link on the chain." Alec rose as he flung the words rapidly out of his mouth, like they might burn him if he had to keep them inside himself any longer.

He was breathing hard. He never spoke to Magnus that way and he was shell-shocked. Alec never spoke to anyone that way, except maybe Jace.

Magnus stood as well and leaned closer, but not in the flirtatious way it was normally; this was deliberate, firm. "Have you ever known what it is like to feel hollow, Alexander? To feel nothing inside but a cavernous hole?"

Alec didn't reply; he didn't have to. They both knew the answer. Alec had felt many things in his lifetime as a Shadowhunter, a _gay_ Shadowhunter, but never before had he felt what Magnus described.

"Of course you have not," Magnus continued, not unkindly. "You do not have to live for all eternity." The harsh reminder that the warlock would live long after Alec, never changing, hung like a death sentence in the air.

Alec sat heavily down on the couch again and began worrying the fraying hem of his sweater. "You're right, I don't know what it's like- to have to live forever," he whispered.

"What do you want from me, Alec?" Magnus sighed, falling into a lime green armchair beside the couch. "That once you are gone I will swear off love forever and spend the rest of my miserable existence with no one but my cat to love me?"

"No- no," he exclaimed exasperatedly, putting his head in his hands in agitation. "I don't want that."

"Then what do you want?"

They both waited for him to say immortality. It was the truth, but they had discussed going down that road already and Magnus made the firm decision for both of them he would not submit the love of his life to the same awful fate.

"I don't know."

"Well, then I suggest that you need to sort out what exactly it is that you want. And Alexander, Alec, I love you, God, do I, but until you have it figured out you shouldn't come back here. If you don't have the faintest idea then how am I ever supposed to figure it out?" he asked, sounding defeated and drained.

"Maybe you're right," Alec agreed softly. He stood up to leave and looked between Magnus and the door that led downstairs for a few moments before slipping out with the usual Alec-like grace. He didn't say what he so dearly had wanted to and Magnus could tell. There were unspoken words still caught in the boy's throat, but he left, leaving a heavy despair in the room. He flinched when the door was pulled forcefully shut downstairs.

Maybe Jace Herondale had it right all along, that to love was to destroy. All Magnus ever saw was the constant heartache from fleeting love. Fleeting to a creature that was immortal like himself, but endless for one like the Nephilium who lived so short of lives. But he fell into its unforgiving trap time and time again, lured in by the pretty faces. Those pretty faces flashed before him again, in perfect detail. He never forgot the times when he was in love. Through the centuries that was the one thing he could count on to stay crystal clear. Memories and images of family and old, mortal friends faded away as time ticked on, but the faces of old flames stayed as fresh as the day he met them. Among them, Alexander Lightwood stood out the brightest. A star among the reel of faces.

Kicking him out had been the toughest thing Magnus had to do. He had always wondered when Alec would realize he could do much better than an old warlock who has seen too much, and now Magnus handed him a way out. There was the chance Alec could never return to his Brooklyn apartment; Magnus told him not to if he couldn't sort out what he wanted.

God only knew when, or _if_, he would sort through it. The thought made his stomach plummet. Suddenly Magnus wondered if he had made a grave mistake. He did not want to let the Shadowhunter go, and everything in him yearned to run after him and tell him they can work it out together.

Just as he was thinking that was something Magnus Bane, High Warlock of Brooklyn, would never do, chasing after a Nephilium boy, he already found himself halfway down the stairs to his front door. As he passed a window he was dimly aware of the late hour and the rain pouring down in sheets, but none of it seemed of any consequence at the moment.

Fumbling with uncharacteristically shaky hands at the doorknob, he pulled open the door, only to find Alec on the porch, his hand raised to knock, a desolate look upon his face.

Magnus froze, his heart dancing wildly in his chest. Alec's hair and clothes were plastered the his skin from walking through the rain, the brilliance of his blue eyes shining out amongst the shades of darkness swallowing him up. They both only stared at one other uncomprehendingly. Magnus was too surprised to speak.

"I- I know what I want," Alec said hoarsely. His scarred hands pushed the mop of tangled black hair off his forehead.

"I'm not a genie, I am a warlock, I cannot grant every wish," Magnus responded but it lacked his usual flair and attitude.

He ignored the comment and pressed forward determinedly. "I don't care that you have been in love before, that's not the problem," Alec began to explain. "But I love you, and this is my only life I get to be in love and I chose to do that with you, so I need to know this is different for you. You've told me I'm different from the others, but I need you to prove that to me."

Rain ran down his flawless face, making his eyelashes stick together and his lips to part. For not the first time it took Magnus' breath away at just how effortlessly, innocently beautiful Alec remained.

"How?" he breathed. "How do I prove that to you?"

He merely shook his head, looking distraught again. Afraid to get kicked out once more for not knowing the right answer. He shifted from foot to foot anxiously.

"Well, it's a start. Would you like to come in?" he asked.

He hesitated. "I'm dripping wet…"

Shrugging his shoulders elegantly, Magnus simply stepped outside into the rain beside Alec and shut the door so they both were on the porch. Immediately the rain hit him and drenched everything from head to foot.

"I don't know how else to prove it besides to tell you why you are different," Magnus said loudly, raising his voice over the noise of the wind and rain and New York traffic. "When I've been in love before they never seemed to hold me to the esteem that I had for them. It was always the same. I was a fling to the others, nothing more. I have been alive a very long time Alexander Lightwood, and in all that time it is always I that gets my heart broken, never the other way around," Magnus admitted. "That's not how it is with you, Alec. For once my love is returned equally, something I have never experienced before. So you see, in a way, this is the first time for me as well. Many times have I fallen in love, but never like this, mutually."

Magnus' own hair was sticking to his face now; chunks flopped down and obscured his vision further. His heart raced painfully and he couldn't get enough air into his lungs. After baring himself to Alec completely Magnus felt more vulnerable than he had in decades.

"I'm not sure what else I can possible say to you that could ever-" Magnus broke off suddenly as Alec grabbed him in his arms and eagerly pressed their lips together.

After the initial shock of the boy's actions, he kissed back fiercely, finding Alec's face blindly with his hands and felt the hammering pulse under his fingers. Magnus pushed him back until Alec's body hit the metal railing with his back, but Magnus pressed further forward still into the other boy's muscular body. Alec's fingers groped at his waist until his fingers hooked around the belt loop of his jeans and pulled him closer so no air was left between them; a gesture that Magnus himself had done when they shared their first kiss a year ago.

Their slippery faces slid against each other, exploring familiar territory. Magnus bit down lightly on his lip, allowing him instant access to the rest of him, and he couldn't help but marvel at just how far he had come in the kissing department since that kiss, in this exact same spot.

"You're not just saying that?" Alec murmured breathlessly against his lips, making him shudder pleasantly.

"No," Magnus insisted, his hands sliding from his face to his chest where he felt a frantically pounding heartbeat. "I would never lie to you, I love you too much."

"I'm sorry. That I acted that way," Alec apologized, sliding his hands around to the small of his back.

"We knew this wouldn't be easy. A Shadowhunter and a warlock. Times may be more accepting of this sort of thing, but it still hasn't given us any proper solutions to the real problems we face," Magnus remarked broodingly, thinking back more than a hundred years to another couple, very similar to the two standing in the pouring rain in 21st century Brooklyn, New York. "Will you come inside now?"

"Is it warm?" Alec smiled bashfully, looking up through those amazing, dark lashes. He could feel the other boy shivering against him.

"If not, I can remedy that quite quickly," he assured, implying he had more in mind than just turning up the heater. Thoughts of snuggling up close and tight together in Magnus' large bed seemed to warm him up considerably already. "Come on Lightwood, let's get you out of those wet clothes." Magnus tugged on his hand, pulling him towards the door.

"Magnus." He blushed darkly causing the warlock to hide a slight smile at the young boy's timidity.

"I merely meant that you should change into that revolting old pair of pajamas you left here, before you catch pneumonia," he explained mischievously. "Don't let your thoughts wander down provocative paths, Alexander," he teased.

Alec sputtered, looking flustered in the entryway to the apartment and dripping heavily on the tiled floor. "And don't let your mouth hang open that way, dear, you'll attract flies," he said, nudging his chin up with his knuckles then steered him to the stairs.

They both changed into a dry set of clothes before settling in together in front of a fire that Magnus conjured up with a snap of his fingers. That was where the couple spent the remainder of their evening, Magnus stroking the young Nephilium's dark haired head. He let out an almost cat-like purr that would've put Chairman Meow to shame, nuzzling his nose into the soft skin of his tanned neck.

After he realized just how close he had came to loosing Alec, the warlock was in no real hurry to offer him another chance to escape for even a moment. So that night Alec did not go home, which wasn't the first time or all that unusual for that matter. His parents obviously did not completely agree with this particular arrangement, but their son was already 18 and there wasn't a whole lot they could do about it. Besides, it's not as if anything exceptionally scandalous ever occurred. It was a step they both decided they needed to wait on until the future.

* * *

><p>The room was pitch black when Alec opened his eyes groggily. He was lying in Magnus' familiar bed in his old flannel pajamas and ratty t-shirt. The material clashed with the silk of the electric blue sheets making up the now messy bed. Even though he couldn't see him, Alec felt the comforting warmth of the warlock near him in the dark. Rolling onto his back to get more relaxed, Magnus stirred beside him, making a sleepy noise in the back of his throat. Attracted to the heat, Magnus followed the boy's motions and rolled unconsciously onto his side, slipping an arm over Alec's waist. His nose lightly brushed his ear making him shiver at the tickling breath. Alec was used to this sort of thing because Magnus almost always did it while fast asleep and was never aware he did.<p>

This was how it was supposed to be, together with no troubles at all in the world except for how early the morning always seemed to come. Alec never felt more relaxed or at peace then while with his risqué, flamboyant, candid, exotic, outrageous boyfriend. Wriggling down further into the depths of the bed and Magnus' embrace, Alec fell into a deep sleep, for once not worrying about the day that was to follow.

**Like? Dislike? Let me know! Even if it's just small things, please tell me how I can do better. Thanks everyone :)**


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